The Masked City (The Invisible Library #2)(101)

The Light-House by Edgar Allan Poe

Another one that I had trouble getting hold of was Poe’s The Light-House, after the author’s demise. And the version I was after was the completed work, a full novel, unlike the unfinished version found in some worlds. Poe had been quite a famous writer during his lifetime in this world, though he still had problems with drinking and gambling. He’d lived in the American Confederate Empire, as it was called there, and his wife had been a practitioner of the local folk magics. While sorcery worked on that world and was a major subject in universities, most of the Fae in that world were over in Europe, so at least I didn’t have them to worry about. The problem here was that there was supposed to be a cryptogram concealed in the book. It was one of those ‘solve the puzzle and you shall receive my accumulated wealth’ scenarios, which led to copies of the book being very scarce (it had only been published as a limited edition, too). And several secret societies or obsessive treasure-hunters had made finding them even harder. I ended up being chased through the local woods by a large number of magically transformed killer cats, and having to dive into the lake to avoid them, and then crawling out on the other shore and being mistaken for a drowned ghost … Not one of my more triumphant episodes. And not my favourite way to spend Halloween.

The Tale of Loyal Heroes and Righteous Gallants by Shi Yukun

A year later I was sent to acquire a copy of The Tale of Loyal Heroes and Righteous Gallants - a transcription of oral performances by the storyteller Shi Yukun. It was one of those books which show up in rather a lot of worlds, but this particular one was unique - it went on for a hundred chapters longer than other versions. The world where the book was based was quite peaceful, which made a nice change. It was ruled by the Chinese Empire, and there wasn’t much magic or much technology, but there was a lot of trade. I had to establish an identity as a foreign student, travel halfway across China by slow train, and get a place at the university at Ch’ang-an in order to have access to the university library. This was where the only known copy of the full original was stored. I then spent a solid three months sneaking in by night and copying the manuscript by hand, and I only had to dodge the guards a few times. It wasn’t a time-sensitive mission, and this way I could leave the original there. It was quite an enjoyable assignment. I even managed to get some studying done. My life isn’t all running around and screaming, you know.

Lady Catherine’s Denial by Jane Austen

Finally, there’s one mission that I remember particularly due to the book itself. I’m not saying that the world wasn’t interesting - it had high technology, moderate chaos levels, cloned dinosaurs, et cetera. But more importantly, this was the only world on record where Jane Austen had gone on to write whodunits. Naturally I was briefed to retrieve the entire set. The hardest to find was her final book, Lady Catherine’s Denial: the manuscript had vanished with Austen’s death. I managed to trace it to the private estate of a mad scientist in Wales. (I’m not saying that all mad scientists read Jane Austen, but a surprising number of the ones that I’ve met do.) Annoyingly, he was the sort who fills his private park with carnivorous cloned dinosaurs to ensure privacy. I had to sneak in via an underground passage, from a disused local coal mine. Even then I was captured and almost ended up as an experimental subject. (Of course I escaped. I’m writing this, aren’t I?) I still have a copy of the book on my own shelves, if you’re interested. It starts with the murder of Lady Catherine de Bourgh …





LEGENDS OF THE LIBRARY



In the Library one hears plenty of stories about ‘the monster that lives in the basement’ or ‘the Librarian who tried to find the oldest book in the Library and was never seen again’ or ‘the time someone tried climbing out of one of the windows - that lead to nowhere’. Typical urban legends - well, Library legends. Then there are the more classical ones. The sort that have a Librarian lost in the deepest part of the Library. She might come into a room containing a circle of ornate chairs, with sleeping knights in armour seated upon them, where a mysterious voice says to her, ‘Has the time come yet?’ And she says, ‘No, go back to sleep,’ and then runs away, and she can never find the room again. This is a typical folktale of the Sleeping King and his Warriors type - whether about Arthur, or Barbarossa or whatever.

But there are other stories.

They say that a Librarian once saw someone’s cat squeezing through a corner between two shelves. (Some of the older Librarians have pets. Some of the pets can be a little strange.) So he pulled out some books to check behind them, and found a crack in the wall. And since it was a brick wall, and he was a curious man, he levered out more of the bricks in an attempt to find out what was behind the wall. He found a vast echoing darkness, the air dry and unmoving, so pitch-black that even shining a torch into the void illuminated nothing. Being a halfway sensible man (a fully sensible man wouldn’t have removed those bricks in the first place), he didn’t try lowering himself down into it on a rope or anything like that, and he put the bricks back in place. But before doing that, he wrote a note on a piece of paper, suggesting that if there was anyone out there, he’d like to talk, and he threw the note into the darkness before sealing up the crack.

When he returned to his rooms, he sat down with the book he’d been reading earlier that day and tried to relax. But when he turned to the correct page, his bookmark had been replaced with something else - with the note which he’d thrown into the darkness. The paper was now brittle with age and dust, and written on the bottom in the Language was, ‘Not yet, I think.’